Ukraine vs England exlcusive on the Internet

Mitch Connor

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/8286886.stm

England's World Cup qualifier in Ukraine on Saturday will be shown exclusively live to subscribers on the internet who will pay at least £4.99.
All previously broadcast England matches have been available on TV.
Kentaro - an international agency appointed by the Ukrainian Football Federation - originally sold the UK rights for the game to Setanta.
But after the pay-TV firm collapsed, digital sport specialist Perform was appointed to stream the match online.
England have already qualified for the 2010 World Cup, winning all eight of their group matches.

606: DEBATE
No satellite or terrestial TV coverage - it's outrageous isn't it?
Skybluesy
It is understood none of the traditional broadcasters were willing to pay the asking price to screen the game, which kicks off at 1715 BST.
But the news has angered supporters who want to watch the action on television.
The match will be available on a dedicated website and viewers will be able to subscribe to it using PayPal, the electronic payment service.
Peter Silverstone, managing director of Kentaro, told BBC Sport: "You will watch as you would any other streaming on the internet, like YouTube or the BBC iPlayer - there will be a pop-up player that will show the match in a very good quality stream."
Former England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson is part of the studio team for the match, while Kentaro has promised "a top commentary team".

FA does not control away rights - Bevington

The cost of watching the game was being advertised on Monday in the Daily Express as £4.99 if viewers signed up before midnight on Wednesday.
Charges rise to £9.99 for those who subscribe on Thursday and Friday, and £11.99 on Saturday.
Silverstone insisted the project was "commercially viable".
"We have a huge marketing effort behind us with the various newspaper groups that will promote the match on their websites," he said.
"Commercially this will work and genuinely offers an exciting opportunity for us. We wouldn't embark on this project if we didn't feel it had strategic long-term value, this isn't a one-off shot."
Silverstone said Kentaro would take a maximum of one million subscribers for the match - which he said equates to about 2.5 million viewers - because this would be the "safe number to stop at to ensure the optimal broadcast".
The Odeon cinema chain will show the game live throughout the country, including at their flagship cinema at Leicester Square, but the match will not be available in pubs.
Football Association spokesman Adrian Bevington admitted: "We would obviously like to see the game broadcast to as many people as possible" but insisted the matter was out of his organisation's hands.
"These are the rights of the Ukrainian FA and the agents they've appointed to sell them," he told BBC Sport.
"A traditional TV platform would be ideal to broadcast the game but it's not the case. It's not in our control."

A World Cup qualifier should be available for everybody on free to air TV
Mark Perryman
England travelling fan
ITV has the rights to home England games and, under the terms of their contract, has taken over Setanta's broadcast rights for away friendlies.
However, that aspect of the deal does not cover away qualifying games, and neither the BBC, ITV, Sky nor Channel Five made a successful bid for the match.
Perform streamed Manchester City and Spurs matches in the Uefa Cup last year when a TV deal could not be agreed - charging about £4 per game - and Bevington insisted: "We're obviously confident in the company that has got the rights - they're a very professional company".
However, travelling England fan Mark Perryman said the fact the match was available only on the internet was "disastrous and an outrage."
"A World Cup qualifier should be available for everybody on free-to-air TV," Perryman told BBC Sport.
"It seems to me there's a very simple solution - Fifa and Uefa should insist as a condition of entry that all nations sell their games to terrestrial stations, whether its the home or away market."
England defender Rio Ferdinand said he thought the broadcasting of the match marked "a good step forward" though.

England web match an outrage - Perryman

"I read that online advertising has taken over from TV, so that tells you something about where it's going in terms of the digital world," he told BBC Sport.
"So I'm sure it'll be the way forward and in the future it'll probably be the reality. I think it's a good way to gauge how many people are interested."
And Andrew Croker, executive chairman of Perform, insisted England fans would "embrace" the internet broadcast.
"I think consumers are pretty sophisticated now, particularly in the UK, where we have been in the vanguard of adopting new technology," he told BBC Sport.
"I think people want a choice - the chance to watch football in a different way. This is pioneering, very exciting and I think people will enjoy it."

Interesting enough development imo. Only being able to see the game on the net is a new one - we gonna have a load of people huddled round the computer screen with their cans?

Wonder if pubs could hook laptops up to video projectors. It says in the article that Pubs will not be showing it but doesn't explain why.

It will also be interesting to see how it fares in the cinema.

rovingrover

Most football pubs will have it. It is on the following satellite channels

HRT 2
Polsat Futbol
SportKlub (Cro)
TRK Futbol
TRK Ukraine
TRT 1
Viasat Football (Nor)
Viasat Sport (Baltic)

However expect a late deal to show it on tv in the UK.

MagicMarker

What a load of shít.

DubDani

Strange Situation, but I agree that I wouldn't be surprised if some station still snaps up the rights on the cheap.

But it won't be ESPN, as they decided to show Russia vs. Germany at around the same time, which should be a cracker.

Adamcp898

But will people really pay a fiver to watch it since England have already qualified, tbh I'd say they would have made more money re-selling the rights

gucci

This will be on tv in pubs in most of the towns I am sure. Alot of the "football" pubs have foreign stations/satellites and I am sure they will be able to sort out something.

Mitch Connor

DubDani wrote: »

Strange Situation, but I agree that I wouldn't be surprised if some station still snaps up the rights on the cheap.

But it won't be ESPN, as they decided to show Russia vs. Germany at around the same time, which should be a cracker.

Why would the rights be going cheap? Why would anyone else have the chance to pick it up now?

This 'Perform' crowd have purchased the rights to show it - the same rights BBC, ITV, Sky etc could have tried to buy. If the BBC had got it, people would not be saying they expect Sky to pick the rights up cheap on Friday night so I don't understand why the situation differs with Perform. They have the rights and that is that - for anyone else to get the rights, they would have to buy them off perform, and i don't see why they would sell them cheap. Also, the fact the Odeon cinema chain are involved would lead me to believe there is little chance of Perform reselling the rights; at least not cheaply.

Mushy

Am gonna be at Wembley that day, wanted to go sdomewhere to watch it. Will have to see now I guess.

The Rooster

An interesting glimpse into the future perhaps?

No real chance of any deal being done to get it shown on telly. They'd have to refund all the money received and they'd never sell another one.

JPA

There'll be uproar about this before the week is out.

mike65

Bloody Setanta

Headshot

guess who picked it up


chelsea tv

Mitch Connor

Headshot wrote: »

guess who picked it up


chelsea tv

Link?

I see they have the U21 game - you sure its not just that?

Headshot

Mitch Connor wrote: »

Link?

I see they have the U21 game - you sure its not just that?

ahh **** it



fail headshot

your right It was U21 game

Mr. Presentable

rovingrover wrote: »

Most football pubs will have it. It is on the following satellite channels

HRT 2
Polsat Futbol
SportKlub (Cro)
TRK Futbol
TRK Ukraine
TRT 1
Viasat Football (Nor)
Viasat Sport (Baltic)

However expect a late deal to show it on tv in the UK.

So what you are saying is the content of the first post is at best misleading and at worst a lie. It is not exclusively internet. It is not even exclusively internet in England!

Eire-Dearg

http://backpagefootball.com/columnists/opinion/the-kentaro-experiment/

Sorry for the site plugging again, but this really is a great read that went up today from Paddy McKenna.

This Saturday evening could well be of the red letter variety for anyone who has ever sat beer in hand on their sofa, or pulled up a chair in a pub, with the express intention of watching a football match. No, I’m not talking about the immovable object meets the immovable object competition set to grace Croke Park. I am instead referring to the dead rubber fixture between England and Ukraine in Dnipro whose unique broadcast to the masses could change the face of sports broadcasting forever.


For the first time ever, an England qualifier will be shown exclusively on the internet, the rights bought up by Swiss based company Kentaro. That’s a name you might want to note down. Because if they get one million subscribers for the clash, as they are very likely to do, you and your mates could find yourselves watching the 2014 World Cup qualifiers hunched over a PC. No doubt wondering if the pixilated bald-looking blob in the top right corner of the screen is actually Stephen Ireland in a green jersey.


But why in the name of all things sacred is this game not on BBC, ITV, Sky or even Five? Well first of all, it was supposed to be on Setanta. You may’ve heard a whisper about them going bust leaving Kentaro, the company hired by the Ukranian FA to sell the rights of the game, with the rather sticky job of trying to resell a by now utterly inconsequential game of ball. That’s because those dastardly English have qualified for South Africa with two games to spare.


The maths of the sale is intriguing. Setanta, before it all went horribly Phil Brown for them, had agreed to pay £5m to Kentaro for the right to broadcast – admittedly before the game was rendered unimportant. With that deal dead, the BBC are believed to have gallantly offered between £1m and £2m for the honour of showing the game. ITV, who are a bit broke, offered a slot in the X-Factor final, which is in fairness, potentially worth a £1m record deal and a Christmas No.1. Kentaro rejected all advances. They must’ve known those creepy, high-haired Irish twins have that X-Factor in the bag.


Undeterred, Kentaro cosied up to internet sports broadcasters Perform, and together they reckon they can sell one million online subscriptions for the game for a minimum of £4.99. (The price raises to £7.99 Thursday and £11.99 for the Johnny Come Lately’s who want to come aboard on Saturday.) The sums here are not exactly difficult, sell all their subs and the minimum they take is £5m.
One million subscribers for a game of no consequence, as you can imagine, is not the easiest sell. But it’s at this point that Kentaro/Perform pulled a real masterstroke. They signed affiliate deals with 8 of the highest selling newspapers in the UK to market the match on their websites in a revenue-share basis.


This was exceptionally clever on two fronts. Firstly, and most obviously, shifting those million subscriptions suddenly looks a lot more doable. Secondly, they sidestep all that nasty negative publicity they were bound to attract had they merely denied soccer fans the opportunity to watch the game on either terrestrial or satellite TV. One of the papers signed up, The Sun, hardly renowned for its measured approach, has hailed the Kentaro deal as a ‘landmark in the digital age.’ It seems every one’s a winner baby and that’s the truth.


Except of course, the football fan. Because watching a game on your television with a can of beer, or if you prefer, with your mates down the local is a divine God-given right of every man, woman, child or beast. Those horrid folk at Kentaro have ensured that English football fans who want to watch the game will be forced to do so huddled around laptops or worse, in cinemas! Odeon have done a deal to ensure the game will be screened in 11 of their venues across the UK. Admittedly, the thought of English lager-swilling footy fans piling into the multiplexes for Sven Goran Eriksson’s measured opinions with a side of popcorn does raise a grin, but if it was us…. Joe Duffy would have his lug burned off.


And yet we Irish football fans have been here before. And there was no internet white knight to save us poor unfortunates. In 1999 Ireland drew Turkey in a two legged play off for Euro 2000 qualification. The first leg was in Dublin – we drew 1-1, you might remember Lee Carsley coming on and giving away a penalty after about 30 seconds on the park. Painful.
The return leg was in Bursa but RTE and the Turkish rights holders were unable to come to agreement on the coverage of the game. Most football fans, and probably RTE too, decided that even though there was no mention of it in the RTE Guide, Billo, Johnny and Eamonn would be there to console us once the whole thing went tits up in Turkey. The Turks would fold, the price would come down and we’d all get to watch the misery unfold right before our eyes.


The day before the game was the first real signal that the whole thing had gone whack. The Taoiseach of the time, some lad called Bertie Ahern, a football fan by all accounts, decided he should give the Turkish PM a bell to sort out impasse. It didn’t work. The next day, the day of the game, the Irish public awoke to the harsh reality that the game really was not going to be on TV. With the internet still in its infancy and broadband still Michael Guiney’s bestselling belt and nothing else, the trusty wireless was the only option for game coverage.
All was not lost however, on the Gerry Ryan show on 2FM that very day, word got out that Turkish TV channel Star TV were showing the game. You couldn’t pick it up with your satellite dish as it was. But if you could scramble on to your roof and face it for Turkey, you might just pick up Star TV. You couldn’t actually make it up. A Sky engineer came on the Ryan show to explain how you might go about repositioning your dish to pick up the Turkish Gilesy and Dunph. Many tried, and a very, very small number managed to pick up grainy images of a 37-year-old Tony Cascarino using his elbows to soften up the windy Turks. The drabbest game of football ever (so we’re told) finished 0-0, we failed to qualify, those kindly Turkish folk had done us a favour.

Back to the future and could this dead rubber in Ukraine really change the way we watch our footy? The answer is probably, ‘yes’. In media circles, TV on the internet is all the buzz. Sure it’s already happening with Youtube and its ilk. RTE have even cottoned on to this with their fancy new player. It’s a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. But don’t panic just yet, RTE have the TV rights to broadcast the Euro 2012 qualifiers. Thereafter is up for grabs.


For English football fans, Kentaro and Perform the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, set to be served at 17.15GMT this Saturday evening. The internet broadcasters have guaranteed a quality service with Sven amongst their crack analysis team. They’ve capped their subscribers at a million to ensure the bandwidth isn’t overloaded and the stream is a high quality for all viewers. Even at that, this is huge test for Britain’s broadband infrastructure. It survived the extra strain the BBC iPlayer placed upon it but one million concurrent streams of live football will surely test its mettle. The novelty factor will ensure that Kentaro and Perform will get the subscribers they need but will football fans be happy to watch Sven’s baldy pate on their computers and in cinemas for future games of consequence? We’ll know more Sunday morning.

Fr Tod Umptious

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

http://backpagefootball.com/columnists/opinion/the-kentaro-experiment/

Sorry for the site plugging again, but this really is a great read that went up today from Paddy McKenna.

Except of course, the football fan. Because watching a game on your television with a can of beer, or if you prefer, with your mates down the local is a divine God-given right of every man, woman, child or beast. Those horrid folk at Kentaro have ensured that English football fans who want to watch the game will be forced to do so huddled around laptops

No they won't, people and pubs will realize that you can pug your computer into the TV and what it from there, and seeing as so many folk have relatively new 30+in tv theses days it will not be a huge problem !

Mossy Monk

It is a nothing game. Setanta had originally purchased the rights for 5.5 million pounds. They went bust and the Ukranian owners of the rights tried to make big money out of it by holding out for a big payday. England qualified, and nobody is interested as all tv networks turned it down due to the asking price. Ukranian rights holders are idiots.

dannydiamond

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

http://backpagefootball.com/columnists/opinion/the-kentaro-experiment/

Sorry for the site plugging again, but this really is a great read that went up today from Paddy McKenna.

lol. Perhaps he could apply for a job with the sun.:rolleyes:
Tap his knee with a hammer and I bet he kicks you in the face with both feet!

Mitch Connor

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

No they won't, people and pubs will realize that you can pug your computer into the TV and what it from there, and seeing as so many folk have relatively new 30+in tv theses days it will not be a huge problem !

few things.

1. Would the average stream - even a good quality one - be of good quality when sent to, and stretched over a 30inch screen or 10foot projector screen?

2. It has been explicitly mentioned pubs will not be showing it.

3. I wonder if the Cinema feeds will be different to the internet feeds - I would imagine it will have to be for resolution issues (and the bandwidth that would be required to download a stream of good enough quality).

Mossy Monk

Mitch Connor wrote: »

3. I wonder if the Cinema feeds will be different to the internet feeds - I would imagine it will have to be for resolution issues (and the bandwidth that would be required to download a stream of good enough quality).

I would assume the cinema chain has payed a good price for this. I'd imagine they will be using a satellite feed just like channels all over Europe showing the game. They will not be using an internet stream for a cinema.

dreamers75

Any streams for this?




/pc bit

I stuck Pats vs Steaua (justin tv link) onto a projector in a pub, did the same with pats vs Elfsborg away last season too but onto an LCD.


lower the resolution of the laptop to 640x480 (may have to use safe mode on some for this) and VGA out works quite well as long as your not too close to the screen as you see pixelation.

Mars Bar

It's all just a money racket. Keep it simple by keeping it on the box I say!

Mossy Monk

mars bar wrote: »

It's all just a money racket. Keep it simple by keeping it on the box I say!

What?

MagicMarker

Was the red card deserved?

Peyton Manning

MagicMarker wrote: »

Brilliant, thanks.

Was the red card deserved?

Yup, definite goal scoring opportunity denied. Rio Ferdinand messed up big time for the goal. Aaron Lennon was the one sacrificed an David James came on, but Shevchenko his the outside of the post and it went wide.

mike65

Rio Ferdinand messed up big time

Ah just like the old days.

Peyton Manning

mike65 wrote: »

Ah just like the old days.

If anyone is old enough to remember them, its you....



Archimedes.

MagicMarker

Absolutely woeful from Cashley there.

MagicMarker

what a shot and what a save by James!!

Kold

FT: Ukraine 1 - 0 England

Quite a few divers on that Ukrainian team.

MagicMarker

England dominated the 2nd half, showed a lot of resolve with 10 men. Unfortunate not to get an equalizer.

mike65

Dirty feckers! Bomb throwers! etc. Mainly though BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Rio.

He was worried about his fitness robbing him of a spot on the plane, maybe he has other concerns.

Seaneh

Who scored for Ukraine?

pogcica

It was also shown live on TV2sport Denmark which almost everyone has as part of their tv package.

on a different note I also have RAI uno on my tv package so i can watch the Ireland game in the comfort of my own home(albeit in Italian:cool:)